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Abstract: 6 Department of Urology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA
6 Department of Urology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA.
7Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Address correspondence to: Zhenkun Lou or Robert W. Mutter, Mayo Clinic, Kellen Building 401,200 First Street SW, Rochester, Minnesota 55,905, USA. Phone: 507.284.2702; Email: [email protected] (ZL). Phone: 507.284.3261; Email: [email protected] (RWM).
People Who Live Past 100 Have a Surprising Abundance of Cancer-Killing Immune Cells
Today, the average human lives for about 71 years.
A rare few people will see their 100th birthday, earning the title of centenarian, and even fewer will live past 110.
We call these folks supercentenarians.
New research published in Cell Press reveals one possible explanation for how these superagers might be dodging the mounting risk of cancer and illness as the years progress.
Cognition and consciousness arise from analog computations, says new theory
A new theory from neuroscientists at MIT’s Picower Institute proposes that cognition and consciousness may depend not only on neurons and synaptic connections, but also on the traveling electrical waves generated by neural activity.
The traditional “brain as circuitry” analogy captures an important part of neuroscience: synaptic connections store and transmit information. But Earl Miller and colleagues argue that synapses alone may be too slow and inflexible to explain how the brain rapidly assembles and reorganizes neural networks from moment to moment.
Their proposal centers on brain waves as a dynamic control system.
Slower alpha and beta oscillations, associated with internal information such as memories, goals and expectations, may regulate faster gamma activity associated with incoming sensory information. Because these waves can travel across the cortex, they could rapidly determine which populations of neurons participate in processing at a particular place and time.
The researchers describe this as “spatiotemporal computing.” Where electrical waves interact, their amplitudes can add or subtract, potentially allowing the brain to perform a form of analog computation through wave interference rather than relying entirely on sequential, digital-like operations.
The theory also incorporates ephaptic coupling—the possibility that electrical fields generated by populations of neurons can directly influence the firing of nearby neurons, providing another rapid mechanism for coordinating neural activity.
The authors extend the idea to consciousness, proposing that conscious awareness emerges when these wave dynamics organize widespread cortical activity into a coherent, globally integrated state. Supporting evidence includes anesthesia research showing that drugs with very different molecular mechanisms can all produce unconsciousness while disrupting large-scale brain-wave organization.
Connecting the power of the stars to geometry
In the world of fusion energy, scientists and engineers study the fourth state of matter known as plasma in an effort to design and build a new type of power plant. Relying on the heat produced by two small atoms smashing together, a network of such facilities would help create a novel source of stable electricity and help ensure America’s energy independence. And while scientists in this endeavor are devoting their attention to complex machinery and temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun, they are also trying to determine the best designs for such a power plant by focusing on geometry.
In fusion systems, shape matters. The earliest device designed by Lyman Spitzer Jr., the founder of the U.S. Department of Energy ‘s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), was shaped like a figure eight. A later system, known as the tokamak, was developed in the 1960s and shaped like a doughnut in an effort to keep the plasma confined by creating a central electrical current that formed vital confining magnetic fields. Other fusion devices were shaped like straight lines or twisty crullers.
Additionally, some fusion systems look like cored apples. Known as spherical tokamaks, they resemble doughnut-like tokamaks that have been compressed, making the hole down the center far narrower than before. Scientists have found that spherical tokamaks have properties that could confine plasma energy more efficiently than conventional tokamaks. These properties could help generate a plasma with the necessary temperature and density for a sufficient amount of time to create a fusion reaction that heats itself, like a mini star on Earth.
Universal pattern revealed in quantum matter
When different materials transition from one phase to another, such as water coming to a boil or a magnet losing its ability to attract metals, something remarkable can happen: They begin to behave identically, following the same mathematical rules. “Physicists call this trait universality—the messy, microscopic details wash out and only a few essential features survive,” explains Jason Alicea, William K. Davis Professor of Theoretical Physics. The math underlying these universal traits is commonly described by a theoretical framework called conformal field theory.
Reporting in the journal Nature, a collaboration between the experimental group of Caltech’s Manuel Endres, professor of physics, and Alicea’s theory group, together with theorists at Université Paris-Saclay and the Technical University of Munich, performed first-of-their-kind experiments on two different conformal field theories using quantum simulators, which are simplified versions of quantum computers tailored for specific tasks.
Using new technology developed for these quantum simulators, the team reports the first direct measurement of energy levels in synthetic quantum matter as predicted by the Ising and tricritical Ising conformal field theories. (Ising refers to Ernst Ising, a physicist who, in the 1920s, solved an early model of magnetism.) Both theories describe universal behavior that emerges when a quantum system—exhibiting exotic traits such as entanglement and superposition—is placed at a tipping point between two states, one of which is more ordered than the other.
Gentle chemical glow helps scientists capture sharper images of living cells
We reach for brighter, better lighting for sharper pictures, whether we’re photographing a puppy or a microscopic cell. In most cases, the light comes from outside the object being photographed. A recent study explored a different approach, using the cells’ own chemical glow to illuminate their internal structures. This new experimental framework, called REID, lets microscopes capture super-sharp, high-resolution details of cell structures by bypassing the need for harsh external lasers that can sometimes damage the cells being imaged.
Chemical reactions inside cells are normally very dim, but researchers discovered that swapping a common chemical co-reactant for a biological buffer called Bis-Tris boosted the cellular glow by 1,000 times. This let them capture sharp, unblurred images in just 20 milliseconds. The REID framework combined computer algorithms with electricity-triggered, chemical and biological (BL) luminescence to sharpen images down to 100 nanometers.
The team tested REID’s sensitivity, or how little of a biomarker it could still detect, using the cancer marker CEA, and compared it with standard fluorescence microscopy. They found that although the REID setup was less efficient at producing light, it was eight times more sensitive at detecting the cancer marker than the standard technique. The findings are published in Nature.
Turning a quantum battery’s environmental sensitivity into an advantage
Quantum batteries, devices that store energy by exploiting quantum mechanical phenomena, could, in principle, be charged faster and more efficiently than classical ones. Despite their potential, connecting these batteries to chargers is known to create quantum correlations that can trap some energy inside the combined battery-charger system. This can reduce useful work, or the energy available to complete a task that can be extracted from the battery alone.
Researchers at the University of Insubria & INFN, University of Genova & CNR-SPIN and University of Milan recently proposed a new design strategy that could potentially increase the usable energy of quantum batteries. Their approach, outlined in a paper in Physical Review Letters, involves connecting both a battery and its charger to a shared environment that is continuously monitored.
“Quantum technologies—including quantum batteries—are usually designed under the assumption that the environment is the enemy,” the authors told Phys.org.